Skip to main content

Asecap meeting tackles tolling’s future challenges

Carole Défossé, communication & information manager at Asecap, previews the association’s forthcoming annual meeting. With 72% of Europeans moving by car and 60% of freight being transported by trucks, road infrastructures are central to Europe’s mobility and toll roads form a key part of those networks.
March 3, 2017 Read time: 3 mins
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carole Défossé is communication and information manager with ASECAP.
Carole Défossé, communication & information manager at Asecap, previews the association’s forthcoming annual meeting.

With 72% of Europeans moving by car and 60% of freight being transported by trucks, road infrastructures are central to Europe’s mobility and toll roads form a key part of those networks.

It is against that background that 486 Asecap’s (the European Association of Operators of Toll Road Infrastructures) 45th annual meeting will be held in Paris, France, from 29 to 31 May. Known as its Study & Information Days, the meeting will look at how toll motorway operators prepare their road infrastructures for transport decarbonisation and respond to the new mobility challenges.

The meeting will provide an occasion for toll road operators, policy makers and public and private stakeholders to discuss a broad range of issues. Topics will include financing of new mobility needs and trends, the European Electronic Tolling System (EETS), cooperative intelligent transport systems, sustainable mobility, road maintenance, automated and connected driving technologies, security and data protection issues and protecting and preserving the environment.

The first day (30 May) is devoted to a major political session focusing on new finance procedures for innovative developments. With public budgets under pressure, the concession model remains a powerful method of providing high-quality and well-maintained road infrastructures.

This model employs modern technology to accommodate connected (and possibly automated) driving, car sharing and the use of mobile technologies (apps). Collectively, these will help the decarbonisation of transportation, promote multimodal transport and support new mobility trends.

Experts present

Throughout the day, financial experts, policy makers and managers from toll motorway operators will share their ideas and experiences on the topic and provide solutions that can be applied.

In addition there will be three policy sessions, the first of which will focus on latest developments the future of EETS. The second will explore actions by toll road operators to ensure a smooth transition to more innovative and advanced ITS solutions including the role of the road infrastructure in accommodating automated and connected driving.
With the potential for traditional and automated vehicles to be sharing the same motorway network, there is an urgent need to create a framework that can safely cope with both. The ambition of the European Commission’s recently launched European Strategy on Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) is to see connected vehicles on European roads by 2019, so toll road operators need to prepare their infrastructures.

The third session of the day will look at cutting-edge projects undertaken by Asecap members to provide road infrastructures offering the highest standards of safety.

Perhaps the highlight of the second day is a keynote address by an FBI Special Agent working in the Cyber Branch who will look at how toll road infrastructure operators can and should protect their data communication systems in the context of an increasingly digitalised motorway sector. Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure data communication urgently needs to be secure because they could be hacked and – deliberately or not - cause serious or fatal incidents.

However, before that, delegates will hear about the more mundane, but none the less important, projects by toll motorway operators to reduce CO2 emissions and preserve the fauna and flora alongside their network.

Members’ marketing

During a commercial session, Asecap members will highlight creative marketing activities aimed at road users. A final session will see the EU and US - through the 3804 International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) - exchange viewpoints in light of the current and future challenges for the toll industry on both sides of the Atlantic.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Align transport infrastructure needs with ITS offerings
    July 19, 2012
    Kallistratos Dionelis, General Secretary of ASECAP, ponders the absence of creativity and innovation in the road management sector. 'Traditional' road managers and ITS specialists share many of the same ultimate goals and yet, he says, a common understanding of what technology can achieve is still conspicuously absent.
  • Future of tolling: the priorities
    January 14, 2020
    In the final part of his investigation into the future of tolling technology, Josef Czako of Moving Forward Consulting asks what industry figures see as the priorities going forward…
  • IBTTA 2011 Annual Meeting highlights developing trends in tolling
    January 26, 2012
    Alain Estiot, chief meeting organiser of this year's IBTTA Annual Meeting and Exhibition, talks about hot topics for discussion. The IBTTA's 79th Annual Meeting and Exhibition, which takes place this year in Berlin in September, will once again take many of the developing trends from around the world and look at their effects on the tolling sector. Host organisation Toll Collect's Alain Estiot, chief meeting organiser, says that the event has to be viewed against a backdrop of major global change.
  • Asecap Days 2025: seizing the opportunities
    May 28, 2025
    Delegates during day one of the two-day 52nd Asecap Days conference in Madrid were left in no doubt the financial challenges that face motorway concessionaires as the transition to different mobility increases in pace...